The present invention relates in general to adaptive automotive climate control systems, and, more specifically, to the collection and distribution of crowd-based HVAC data via a central cloud server system.
Climate control systems provide important functions within automotive vehicles including thermal comfort for occupants and maintaining visibility through vehicle window glass. Since heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems can consume large amounts of energy, however, it is desirable to optimize HVAC operation to perform the climate functions in an energy efficient manner. Efficiency may be particularly important for electric and hybrid vehicles, for example, where stored electrical energy from a battery is used to meet the requirements of the HVAC system. Improved efficiency and customer satisfaction have been obtained using HVAC control systems that automatically adapt HVAC operation to the temperature/humidity conditions in and around the vehicle, energy/fuel status, occupancy status, and other factors.
Vehicle preconditioning occurs just prior to the time that a user (e.g., driver) of a vehicle enters the vehicle. Preconditioning may include heating or cooling of the passenger cabin and/or defrosting of the windows, for example. A typical preconditioning event may be triggered by a remote engine start via a wireless transmitter or at a prescheduled time, for example. Choosing the best use of the HVAC system for efficiently preparing the vehicle for use is especially challenging in view of limitations for automatically fully characterizing the HVAC environment using vehicle mounted sensors. For example, the extent of ice or frost on the windows may be unknown. Internal and external ambient temperature measurements may not always be sufficient to predict the level of heating or cooling that would be perceived as the most comfortable, either generally or for a particular person or type of person. Off-board (i.e., remotely reported) weather information has been used as an input to HVAC controllers, but even with such additional information it has not been possible to identify with sufficient reliability what levels of HVAC operation are best suited for preconditioning a vehicle.